Mamdani’s NYPD is still working with Israel

After the reign of Mayor Eric “I would marry Israel” Adams, the firm stance that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani took against Israel’s violence in Gaza was refreshing to some of his voters. But whatever Mamdani’s personal views on Israel, not much has changed when it comes to the institutional relationship between New York City and the Jewish state, particularly when it comes to the New York City Police Department’s work with Israeli law enforcement. In fact, the NYPD liaison stationed in Israel, whom the New York Post reported had left the job a week before Mamdani was elected, is now back on the job, a spokesperson for the police department told City & State.

Soon after winning the mayoral election, Mamdani began walking back some of the firm stances he had previously taken against Israel. 

As an Assembly member, Mamdani had called for a boycott of Cornell Tech, a partnership between Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, due to the latter’s ties to the Israeli military. During his mayoral campaign, Mamdani said that he would instruct the NYPD to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, if Netanyahu stepped foot in New York City. 

But a few days after winning the mayoral election, Mamdani said he would not support a boycott of Cornell Tech. Last month, he released a video calling Netanyahu a war criminal while admitting he did not have the authority to arrest him. The video drew more than millions of views overnight.  

Nowhere has the gap between Mamdani’s views on Israel and his actual policy been greater than his management of the NYPD. In a 2023 speech at the Democratic Socialists of America’s national convention, Mamdani said, “When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF” – which he later clarified was a reference to the to the joint training between the city’s police department and Israeli law enforcement, including IDF personnel. As mayor, though, he has not made any efforts to disentangle the NYPD from Israeli law enforcement.

Instead, he has largely left the department to its own devices under the leadership of NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who describes herself as a “proud Zionist.” Mamdani may be a master at messaging, but how does that trickle down into his administration, when there are well-documented ties between the NYPD with Israeli law enforcement, security organizations and an NYPD officer stationed at Israeli National Police headquarters? 

Israel and the NYPD

After 9/11, the NYPD looked to Israel to learn best practices for counterterrorism and intelligence gathering, sending officers to a law enforcement exchange program in 2002, initiated by the retired police chief Louis Anemone. The NYPD continued to observe and learn the methods and techniques of the Israeli police and border guard operations in the West Bank. The Jewish Institute for National Security of America, which organizes these officer exchange programs, “maintains that its trips focus on management and policy issues, and that officials do not learn about physical tactics,” as reported by The Forward. (The Israeli government has not responded to requests for comment on their relationship with the NYPD.) 

In 2007, the NYPD began stationing an officer in Israel through its International/Domestic Liaison Program. Detective Charlie Benaim, a former IDF officer, has been based at an office stationed at the Israel National Police Sharon District headquarters in Kfar Saba since 2012. He is one of more than a dozen senior intelligence bureau officers stationed at domestic and international locations outside of New York as part of the liaison program, which is partially funded by the New York City Police Foundation. In turn, the foundation is funded by wealthy donors, including the Tisch family. The NYPD commissioner’s uncle Andrew Tisch and her cousin Alexander Tisch sit on the foundation’s Board of Trustees. Netanyahu even reportedly likes to stay in the Tisch family's hotel when he is in New York. 

Beyond the NYPD actively working with Israeli law enforcement, the NYPD continues to contract with Israeli companies like Terrogence Global, a web intelligence reporting service founded by former soldiers from the IDF Intelligence Corps. As recently as September 2025, during the Adams administration, NYPD officials also continued to take official trips to Israel for counterterrorism and antisemitism training, even during the war with Hamas.

No trips to Israel are currently planned for this year, an NYPD spokesperson said, but it’s not clear if that’s due to Mamdani’s subliminal influence. The spokesperson said the mayor has never given any directive instructing the NYPD to stop cooperating with the Israeli national police nor to stop attending any conferences or trainings in Israel. City Hall spokesperson Sam Raskin confirmed this and said that while no City Hall officials have travelled to Israel for official business under the Mamdani administration, no travel edicts have been issued prohibiting travel to any country, including Israel. 

Some other New York institutions have paused official travel to Israel, given the security threats. The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York has regularly hosted lawmakers on mission trips to Israel. City Council Speaker Julie Menin said in January she plans to continue the tradition and lead a mission to Israel during her tenure – but a council spokesperson said that there are no planned events for the City Council in Israel at this point in time.

Tisch’s NYPD, Mamdani’s New York 

Mamdani’s decision to retain Tisch as commissioner upset many of his voters and endorsing groups making up his anti-Zionist base, who criticize her for helping to create the NYPD’s extensive surveillance system and overseeing the aggressive policing of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses during the Adams administration.

Just last month, the pro-Palestinian activist group Pal-Awda publicly released a list of demands for the mayor on ways that he can leverage his power to take “concrete action against Zionism,” which include firing Tisch. The group, along with fellow pro-Palestinian organization Within Our Lifetime, has also called for Mamdani to put new policies in place to stop illegal sales of land in the occupied West Bank at real estate events in New York City.

“Especially for a mayor who sort of positions himself to be really sympathetic to these issues and has an understanding of what's going on in Palestine, I think there's an expectation that the rhetoric needs to be acted upon and simply expressing solidarity with international law is not enough when there are actual New York laws that can be invoked,” said Shraddha Joshi, an organizer with Pal-Awda. 

Mamdani is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and as an Assembly member, he sponsored the Not On Our Dime act aimed at preventing New York-registered charities from funding activity connected to illegal Israeli settlements. State Sen. Jabari Brisport, his friend and fellow co-sponsor, told The New York Times that he expects the mayor will find ways to support the BDS movement as mayor. "It's important for him to do so. I kind of hope people do bring it up,” he said. But since he became mayor, Mamdani has not tried to implement any BDS policies.

Mamdani now has control over the NYPD, which means he has inherited all of the department’s problems. Critics of the police department's surveillance measures, which Mamdani himself once lambasted, have been disappointed by the mayor’s lack of action in curtailing these measures. “At what point does one’s inheritance become their property?,” asked Edward Ongweso Jr. in a piece for New York magazine. Criminal justice reform advocates have also chastised the mayor’s apparent deference to Tisch, calling her approach to low-level crime “broken windows policing” and saying it is antithetical to Mamdani’s vision for the city.

Despite his supporter’s concerns about Tisch’s approach to policing, the mayor has publicly defended his commissioner. At an unrelated press conference last week, the mayor expressed his confidence in Tisch’s ability to execute his vision, “I would not have someone serving our city if I was not confident in what they were doing.” 

Mamdani has also faced criticism from within the NYPD. Law enforcement sources told the New York Post that his encouragement of protests during Netanyahu’s visit to the U.N. was “reckless” and “unfair to your own cops.” The situation became even more awkward when the mayor’s spokesperson told the Post that the NYPD would be providing a security escort for first lady Rama Duwaji’s planned trip to Lebanon and Syria, which, like Israel, are under federal travel advisories. An NYPD spokesperson immediately denied that her detail would be joining – and the mayor himself acknowledged there’d been a miscommunication. 

As mayor, there is little Mamdani can do to change the U.S. relationship with a powerful state like Israel. But he does have the power to look into the contracts, vendors and organizations his agencies work with – power that he has so far declined to use.

Still, Mamdani has demonstrated some of the most concrete political action elected officials in New York have ever done to show his support for Palestinians. He revoked Adams’ anti-BDS order on his first day in office, released a video for Nakba Day commemorating the forced displacement of Palestinians, refused to march in the annual Israel Day parade, publicly accused Netanyahu of genocide and criticized the illegal sale of occupied Palestinian land. 

Those actions have captured attention – including from Netanyahu himself. The prime minister, who is locked in his own reelection battle, has treated Mamdani as a foil. He has defiantly insisted he’ll attend the U.N. General Assembly in spite of Mamdani’s claim that he’s not welcome in New York City, and his campaign ads in Israel prominently feature Mamdani as one of his top foes, right next to the new supreme leader of Iran.